Week 5 Ocean Odyssey Underwater Vehicles and Levers


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Goal:

Explore underwater vehicles -- what the types are, what they look like, what makes them work...
Look at buoyancy (submarines), and how to remotely pick up things off the bottom of the ocean
Explore levers

Agenda:

Videos: Underwater vehicles, talk about how they work
Ocean experiments: Buoyancy, picking items off the bottom of the ocean
Book: How do you life a lion? (Note: difficult to read aloud to a large group)
Build levers, teeter totters, etc.

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Ocean science:


Videos

Submarines: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zTohYRUt_2c
How submarines work (good diagrams -- held the kids captive!): http://youtu.be/yb3e4IegeJ0
Amazing video of submarine coming up out of the ice: http://youtu.be/8aUqr7-Cgt8


Remotely Occupied Vehicle
Talk about reasons why you'd use an ROV (size, danger, depth)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Aui012MLgEo
http://ocean.si.edu/ocean-videos/exploring-ocean-life-underwater-vehicle

Places to use a ROV: Watching an underwater eruption!
http://video.nationalgeographic.com/video/news/environment-news/west-mata-submarine-volcano-vin/

Water Activities


1. Sink / Float Activity (or in Jeremy's terms: Sink/Drown activity)

Fill large bowl with water and experiment which items float/sink (beans, penny, etc)
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2. Explore the buoyancy of a submarine:

Give them 2 soda cans, one full of air and one full of water. Let them feel the weight of each -- is the empty can really empty? What does it have in it? What happens when the 2 cans are put into a basin of water? Try pushing down on the empty can and see what happens. Then hold it under the surface of the water and watch bubbles of air rising out until the can eventually sinks.
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3) Give out straws and see what happens when you blow air in the can that is full of water
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3. Design a tool to pick up things from the bottom of the ocean:
http://www.immersionlearning.org/index2.php?option=com_docman&task=doc_view&gid=110&Itemid=143

Give various objects to build a contraption that can pick the items that sank off the bottom of the "ocean". Your hands cannot touch the water.
We used pennies, paper clips (one twisted so it could be hooked), big beans and sculpey balls in the water.

Tool-making equipment included straws, string, aluminum foil, pipe cleaners, more sculpey (NOTE: Sculpey is great for sink/float experiments as it can get wet and it won't disintegrate -- you can form/re-form it in the water, let it dry and use it again another day... Available at ACMoore and Michaels.)
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Check out this site for more
http://ocean.si.edu/ocean-science/deep-ocean-exploration


Snack!

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Simple machines:

Book: How Do You Lift a Lion? by Robert E. Wells
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Levers -- load, pivot, force
Examples... teeter totter, others... -- draw on board

Lever demo of Jeremy and his Grandpa on vacation in Canada:
https://www.dropbox.com/s/mvwy4vqgh1xncq2/MOV05266.MPG

Make some levers with the LEGO's -- can you make a teeter totter? A catapult? A railroad gate crossing?

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End with a general lego building time if they want to!